Mining returning in Mass Effect 3

Despite being one of the longest mini-games of recent times the 'mining' mini-game will be making a return in Mass Effect 3.

BioWare's Casey Hudson confirmed the return of mining in an interview with UK website Videogamer.com.

Hudson said about the feedback from Mass Effect 2 on the mining elements: "It was like, 'It's strangely addictive. It's kind of therapeutic'. But there were different personality types, too. And one of the personality types that we hadn't encountered was there were a lot of people that when they know that they can go and get resources through something like that, they literally want to mine the entire galaxy that night. And then, yeah, when you spend eight hours in a mini-game, it does become... there's only so much too it. And we never expected that it'd be played that way. We thought people would noodle in it a bit, get a few resources to get an upgrade, and then go back and do the rest of the game."

He continued: "When you look at the feedback, there are things that people liked about it, and functionally it serves a purpose. I don't think there's a problem with any of those. I think it's the way people relied on it, and the way we relied on it maybe too much in parts of the story. And also just when you think about the speed of it."